Burials

by Mary Anna Evans

  “I’m on it,” Roy says. “And what about you? Don’t you need protecting?”

  She waves a hand. “There weren’t any bullet holes in my house. Just Kenny’s and Mickey’s. Why would anybody come for me?”

  “I can’t say anything to you about an ongoing murder investigation.”

  This statement startled Alba into a rare moment of silence, but she recovered. “Are you presuming that this has something to do with Sophia Townsend’s death?”

  Cloud gave her the flick of the eyelid that said, Are you nuts? Of course I’m presuming that.

  “I’m not going to share sensitive information with you,” he said, “but why wouldn’t you think those bullets had anything to do with her death? When have you ever known this many bullets to fly in this county? Other than bullets aimed at deer, I mean. It can’t be a coincidence that all this shooting is happening the very week we uncovered Sophia Townsend.”

  “The first shooting happened before she came back to haunt us all, so I don’t think it’s related. I’ve been terrified for my son’s safety ever since he told me about it.”

  “What about Kenny?” Cloud said. “He was there, too. And now somebody’s shot up his house. You’re not worried about the man who’s been your neighbor for your entire adult life?”

  “Nobody’s going to hurt Kenny. He’s never home any more. I’m actually surprised he was there yesterday. He’s got a new girlfriend and he spends his time with her. I’m glad for Kenny. It’s taken him all these years to get over his wife—what was her name? Maria? He’s pined for Maria ever since she joined the Peace Corps because it would take her half a world away from him.”

  “When did she do that?”

  “The very day she found out that Kenny was sleeping with Sophia Townsend. And before you drag her into this, know that she was gone at least a month before the woman disappeared. I doubt Maria came back from Ecuador long enough to do the killing.”

  “And you know this because…?”

  “This is a small town. Everybody knows everything.”

  “Then sleeping at his girlfriend’s house doesn’t make Kenny all that safe, does it?” She shrugged in acknowledgement.

  “To answer the question that brought you here,” Cloud said, “I’ve got an officer watching Mickey’s house. Kenny’s, too. If you’ll tell me where he’s sleeping, I can send the officer to the house where he actually is.”

  “Her name’s Chloe Darwin. She lives on Market Street, near the courthouse.”

  “I’ll send somebody right away. It wouldn’t hurt anything for your ex-husband to go stay someplace else, too. You got any ideas?”

  “He’s not in that house your people are guarding. I told him to go stay with our son. Maybe the shooter won’t find him there. If so, at least they can protect each other.”

  Faye wasn’t sure how they were going to protect each other from bullets tearing through walls, but if imagining that made Alba feel better, so be it. She also wasn’t sure she’d want to be Alba, staying alone on a street that both her neighbors had fled.

  “If all these shootings are truly about Sophia’s death,” Alba said, “then maybe the killer is trying to shut up the people who might pose a threat. That’s who’s being targeted. Kenny on the first day, if you can blame that shooting on a body that hadn’t surfaced yet. That evening, Kira was shot while she was guarding the grave. And today, Mickey and Kenny.”

  “And maybe you.”

  Alba didn’t even acknowledge Cloud’s interruption. “Poor Kira. Maybe she was just too close to the truth.” After a pause that hung on too long, Alba announced, “I have to go.”

  “Go where?” Faye asked.

  “To find Emily.” Alba did not say, To find Emily, dummy, but her tone said it for her. “Emily knows as much as anybody about Sophia Townsend’s last days. Kenny, Carson, Mickey—they’ve all got people who care for them. Have you checked on Emily?”

  She turned an appraising stare on Cloud.

  “I sent some people around to her place yesterday evening, right after the shooting on your street.”

  Alba was moving toward the door as quickly as she had come through it. “Not yesterday. Today. Have you checked on her today? That poor woman lives alone in the big fine house her husband built for her. It’s smack in the middle of fifteen acres. You know that, Roy. It’s not like our street where Mickey drops a hammer on his toe and Kenny comes running when he howls. Nobody would hear shots at Emily’s house.”

  She was out the door. Roy called out, “Alba, wait. We’ll go with you,” but his office door was already slamming behind her.

  As Faye and Roy scrambled to catch her, Faye said, “Who’s carrying a torch for whom?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she came to tell us where Kenny and Mickey are hiding. Could be that she wants the word out. Maybe she hopes the killer finds them.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Alba had parked out in front of the station in the visitor’s lot, but Roy’s vehicle was in out back behind a security gate. By the time they reached the street, Alba was out of sight.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know where Emily lives.”

  Faye was unaccountably afraid. Nothing had changed. Emily’s situation was exactly the same as it had been before Alba burst into his office, but now she knew that Alba thought Emily was in danger.

  Maybe Alba was right. But if she was right that Emily could be in danger, then she was driving toward that danger as fast as she could go. Roy Cloud clearly did not intend to let Alba do that alone.

  ***

  Roy Cloud and Alba Callahan were both excellent drivers who knew the back roads around Sylacauga, but Alba had a head start. Roy did his best to catch up, careening around blind curves that only a Sylacauga native could navigate. Faye had lost count of the steep hills they climbed at top speed toward a waiting curve that was invisible until the moment they crested the summit.

  Were they gaining on Alba? Faye had no way to know.

  At last, she got a glimpse of Alba’s cherry-red sedan ahead as Roy drove toward it much faster than Emily’s long gravel driveway wanted him to go.

  She saw Alba park the car and run for Emily’s porch. She slammed the front door open like a woman who was certain that nobody in Sylacauga locked their doors. Maybe they didn’t.

  Faye and Roy were close behind her, running hard, but they had only reached the front step when they heard Alba wail.

  “Oh, no no no. Oh, sweetie, no.”

  They found Alba in the kitchen, sitting in a puddle of clotted blood with Emily’s head in her pale yellow lap. Roy rushed to check Emily’s pulse, but Faye could see how things were.

  He stepped back and dialed his phone. Faye heard him murmuring words like “gunshot to torso” and “dead within minutes,” and she knew he was telling Bigbee what had happened.

  Alba rocked Emily’s body and sobbed. “She never hurt anybody in her whole life. You know that, Roy.”

  Dropping the phone to his side, Roy said, “I do.”

  Alba looked at him with eyes that were as angry as they would have been if he’d shot Emily himself. “We all knew her well enough, but we avoided her. We thought she was clingy. Needy. Nobody wanted to be the next person that Emily loved too much. Nobody had time to let her be the best friend they ever had.”

  Roy dropped to a squat and put a hand on Alba’s shoulder. She shook it off.

  “I take responsibility,” he said. “I should have sent somebody to keep an eye on her.”

  “Well, I’m not letting you have the responsibility. I want it. The police can only do so much. The rest of us have to do our part. I could have come out here to take care of Emily. I am a damn fine shot.”

  Faye didn’t doubt her.

  A wound in the center of Emily’s chest was responsible for all that blood. Alba ignored the gore and wrapped
her arms tighter around the dead woman.

  “We’re so very proud of being a small town where everybody knows everybody. But that doesn’t mean we treat everybody like a human being. I should have thought about Emily yesterday when somebody shot at Kenny and Mickey. She was the only other person who knew Sophia at the end. Of course, she was a target. Maybe she was the target all along. I should have seen it.”

  “What are you saying?” Faye asked.

  “Did anybody get hurt when Carson and Kenny were being shot at? And you, Faye.”

  “No.”

  “Did anybody get hurt yesterday? The shot at Mickey went wild. Kenny got lucky. Again,” Alba said. “All of the people who knew Sophia—Mickey, Kenny, Emily, Carson, me—have been near at least one of the shootings. Well, except Sly, and I don’t know what to think about him. The rest of us have all been shot at but, until today, none of us has even been hurt.”

  “I haven’t thought of it that way. We’re dealing with a pretty incompetent shooter,” Faye said.

  “No joke. I could have stood in the woods and taken Mickey out through his bedroom window. No problem. Don’t think I haven’t considered it.” Alba brushed Emily’s hair off her bloody forehead and kissed it. “But why Emily? Who would want to kill her? There was nothing scary about her.”

  Faye was silent, reviewing Sophia’s field notes in her head and trying to figure out what made Emily different. “Roy, Emily told us about something that happened on the last day and Sophia’s notes confirmed it. Sophia said she sent everybody home early. Why hasn’t anybody else mentioned that? When I mentioned it to Mickey, he got upset and asked how I could know about it. I read it in Sophia’s journal, but I didn’t say so. He must have thought I heard it from Emily. Maybe that’s when he decided that she remembered too much and he couldn’t leave her alive.”

  Cloud was moving toward the door with his keys in one hand and his phone in the other. “Where’s Mickey? Alba, where’s Mickey? Are you sure he’s at Carson’s house?”

  Faye tried to follow him, but he said, “Oh, no. Take a look at that woman on the floor and tell me you think I’d let you come near that man. I shouldn’t have let you come with me just now. Alba will give you a ride back to town. I’ll send backup and the medical examiner to look after Emily. And can you make Alba get out of my crime scene? I’d do it, but I have to go catch the man who shot this poor woman.”

  Alba wrapped her arms tighter around Emily’s neck. “I’ll give her up when the medical examiner comes and not before.”

  Roy threw up his hands and left. Neither Faye nor Alba spoke as they listened to him start his car. Faye drew back to give Alba time alone with her friend. She pulled out her phone and silenced it so that the sound wouldn’t disturb Alba. She typed

  Emily’s dead. Shot.

  and pushed Send.

  “What are you doing? Did you text somebody? Stop that.”

  Alba struggled under the weight of Emily’s body, finally shifting it off her lap and standing up. “Was that your husband you texted?”

  Faye nodded her head, not sure why Alba was bothered by a simple text.

  “He’ll tell Sly and—oh, it doesn’t matter. Sly knows. He’s the one who did this. He has to be.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I heard you just now. You think Mickey did this because you told him about something that happened that last day. Did you tell your husband the same thing? Because Joe is a pipeline straight to Sly. If Emily was killed by someone who was afraid she remembered too much, it had to be Sly, not Mickey. I won’t have him railroaded for crimes he didn’t commit.”

  Faye could imagine Alba standing in a courtroom before a jury, competent and in charge, defending the ex-husband she still loved.

  Gravel scratched under Cloud’s spinning wheels as he backed down the long driveway. As soon as the sound of his engine faded, Alba crouched beside Emily and gently placed the woman’s hands across her wounded chest. She stepped back to get a good look. After a second, she reached down and closed the dead woman’s eyes.

  “There. She looks comfortable, don’t you think? Now I have to go talk to my son and my ex-husband.”

  “Roy’s on his way to Mickey and he—”

  “Did you think I told him the truth about where Mickey is? And my son? There’s a killer running around Sylacauga. I’m not telling anybody where to find Mickey and Carson. Not even Roy Cloud.”

  Alba was walking to her car so quickly that Faye had to work to keep up.

  “But Roy thinks Mickey is the killer. At least, he thinks he killed Emily.”

  “Then who shot a hole in his house yesterday? Kenny? If Kenny did it, then who was shooting at him and you and Carson on that first morning that Sophia’s body was discovered? Who else is left that could have killed Sophia? Sly? My money’s on Sly. He’s the only one involved who hasn’t been shot at yet. Other than Roy Cloud.”

  “What evidence do you have that points to Sly, other than that he once worked for Sophia Townsend? What was his motive? He has alibis for the shooting at your house and the one at the Sylacauga site. Nobody can put him anywhere near the scenes of the crimes. Something doesn’t add up.”

  “His motive is to cover up the fact that he murdered Sophia. He was obviously trying to scare Carson into shutting down his project on that first day. That’s probably what he was doing on the night Kira Denton was killed. He needed to obscure some evidence and Kira got in the way.”

  As far as Faye knew, word of the pearls and figurine had not gotten out, nor did anyone know that something in a box seemed to have been taken. Alba was dead-on when she ascribed Kira’s killing to someone who wanted to hide evidence. Faye just couldn’t believe that it was Sly.

  “Did you know that Sophia sent her crew home early on that last day?” Faye asked. “Do you remember if Mickey ever came home early? I have to think you were keeping close tabs on his comings and goings at that particular time in your marriage.”

  Alba said nothing. She just shook her head and kept shaking it. Oddly, Faye didn’t think she was shaking it at her question about Mickey’s whereabouts. She seemed to be shaking it at a voice inside her head that was saying things she didn’t like.

  “I have to believe that Mickey knows something,” Faye said. “You should have seen him when he found out that I knew Sophia sent them home early on that last day.”

  “Mickey will tell me the truth. He always does.”

  “Except for when he was sleeping with Sophia.”

  “Well, yeah. And he learned his lesson, didn’t he?”

  They reached Alba’s car and Faye could see that she was having no success in getting Alba to stay put. “Where are you going? I thought you were going to hang on to Emily’s body until somebody peeled her out of your hands?”

  “That’s what I told Roy. You really do believe people when they talk, don’t you? Faye, that’s a bad life strategy. Why would I tell Roy that I was planning to wait here while he rushed off to find Mickey, who is absolutely not where I told Roy he was? Why would I volunteer that information?”

  “Because honesty is a virtue?”

  Alba snorted.

  Faye decided to stop arguing facts with an admitted liar and said, “You do what you need to do. I’ll wait here and talk to the medical examiner when he comes. Joe will come get me later.”

  Alba put an impatient hand on her hip with a gesture that made her look like a supermodel, only covered in blood and sixty years old. “You don’t think I’m going to leave you here to call Roy Cloud, do you? You’ll tell him I’m on my way to let Mickey know he’s a murder suspect, and that just won’t work. It won’t work at all. Give me your phone and get in the car.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Are you carrying a gun?” Alba tapped her blood-stained yellow boot while she waited for an answer.

 
“Of course not.”

  “Well, I am. And it’s loaded.” She gestured to the oversized leather tote hanging from her shoulder. “I think I need some company on this trip. Get in the car.”

  ***

  Faye tried to piece together what Cloud would do when he got to Carson’s house and found nobody home. He would call Alba. When he got no answer, he would call Faye.

  Alba had Faye’s phone and the ringer wasn’t on, so she wouldn’t know if Roy called and she wouldn’t know if Joe texted her back. After a little time had passed, they would wonder why she hadn’t answered, but there would be no urgency to finding her.

  Was there any urgency? Alba had said she was just taking Faye along for a ride to demand the truth from her ex-husband. Faye presumed she intended to let her go afterward but she didn’t know that for sure. If Faye turned out to be a threat to any of the people Alba cared about—Mickey, Carson, Kenny, or herself—Faye could believe that Alba would shoot her.

  Was there any sequence of events that would bring help?

  She’d texted Joe that Emily was dead. He had probably already texted her back. At first, he would assume that she was busy at the crime scene, either as Roy’s employee or as a witness. As time went on, he would worry, but she could think of no reason for him to look for her at Alba’s house.

  What about Roy Cloud? If he called her after he failed to find Mickey and then went back out to Emily’s house to check on them when she didn’t answer, he would find that Faye and Alba were gone. This was to be expected since he’d told her that Alba would take her home. If he kept trying to reach her without getting through, would he eventually call Joe to make sure she’d arrived safely?

  The most comforting answer Faye could muster was “Maybe.”

  How dangerous was Alba? Was she the killer? Had she committed any of the shootings?

  At Emily’s house, Alba had convinced Faye that she was an innocent bystander, concerned only with the safety of her husband and son. But Alba’s entire life was performance art. Was anything she did or said real? How would anybody know?